The wonders of the night
by hobgoblin123
Summary: The Necountess of Merentha realizes that she might have married the wrong man. No slash. This story was also posted on AO3 yesterday.


**The wonders of the night**

Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy, and no profit whatsoever is intended.

Credits: The part where Gerald cautions Narilka that the dark fae is dangerous for her is from BSR, page 47, but it isn't an exact quote.

A/N: This is another contribution of mine to the 'Golden Oldies' challenge substituting this year's Porn Battle. The prompts are: Gerald Tarrant/Narilka Lessing; apprentice, beauty, choices, night (PB XIV, Fiery Fourteen).

Due to the lack of spare time, this story isn't very long, but maybe you'll enjoy it, nonetheless.

Greetings to Morgana, Silvereyedbitch, Shadowy Star, Herdcat, Sartala, Carpatian Lady and Puffskien Overlord of Darkness! It's uncomfortably quiet in the fandom, but I hope that you're still somewhere out there..

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When her husband was speeding up with a hoarse moan, Narilka Tarrant nee Lessing could barely suppress her tears of frustration. Matrimony wasn't quite what she had expected. For a man who had had so many lovers, Andrys was surprisingly clueless concerning a woman's erogenous zones. Either that, or he simply didn't care about her needs.

In her childish naivety, she had fooled herself into believing that everything would change after Gerald Tarrant's demise, that the psychic wounds the cruel butchering of his entire family had left on the man's last living descendant would finally heal. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Under different circumstances, he might have had a chance to find a modicum of peace of mind again, but impersonating the founder-father of his line in order to cut a path through the Forbidden Forest for the damned crusaders had warped and twisted his soul into something which couldn't feel empathy anymore, let alone true love.

For the first time ever, the young woman allowed her thoughts to stray in a direction she had strictly forbidden herself by then. Green eyes changed to gray in her imagination as she thought back to the late evening she had encountered the Hunter on her way home. As if it had been yesterday and not roundabout three years ago, she could see him standing regally in the moonlight like one of the legendary fairy princes her young girl's daydreams had been centering on.

To the end of her days she wouldn't forget the wonders of the night he had chosen to share with her. Listening to the eerie but so very alluring music whose notes had entered her through her hair, skin and even clothes instead of her ears had stricken a chord with her unlike anything belonging to the mortal plane, and the mere recollection of those transcendental tunes was enough to make her blood to run faster in her veins. And how all about her the land had been alive with tendrils of the dark fae, so very delicate that they had been all but invisible in the moonlight, but strong and hauntingly beautiful in the shadows! Just like the creature that had fixed her with those molten pools of silver until nothing had existed for her anymore but him.

"Dangerous. For you," he had cautioned her without ever moving his lips, a silky whisper caressing her brain like the touch of a lover, but yet she had wanted nothing more than staying with him, roaming the night at his side forever and drinking in its beauty until the stars fell from the sky and the world came to an end.

In her fantasy, he once again approached her as gracefully as an uncat, tilted up her face with the tip of a well-manicured, icy finger, and she forgot all about the man on top of her. The Hunter was so very close now, filling her heart and soul with his presence like no one ever before, and she made her choices without looking back. "Apprentice me," she breathed, shuddering with sudden longing as Tarrant's thin lips were curving into a languid smile.

The pale index finger left her chin, brushed one of her erect nipples and glided teasingly ever southwards, and her own hand mirrored the movement without hesitation. On one or two occasions, she had dared to touch herself while laying with Andrys, but her desperate attempts to find fulfillment in their union had resulted in the loss of his erection, followed by a fierce marital quarrel which had put her off any further experiments. But at present, wetter than she had ever been in her entire life and the most sensitive spot between her legs throbbing with the force of her arousal, she couldn't have cared less about her husband's sensibilities.

Closing her eyes in order to keep the harsh reality at bay, she started to circle the small nub of flesh, slowly at first, but soon settling into a hard and fast rhythm. Thankfully, Andrys was so lost in his own world by now that he didn't pay any attention whatsoever to her hand moving between them. His climax couldn't be far off. The way he was moaning and his thrusts were becoming more and more erratic by the second left no doubt about it, but for once, she needn't fear going away empty-handed.

Although her eyelids were still shut and her ears ringing with their harsh, panting breaths, she could feel the music of the night reverberate in her very bones again, could see a veil of deepest purple billowing at the periphery of her mind's eye. Just as the Lord of the Forest had promised, his gift would never be entirely gone for her.

The heartrending beauty of it brought her closer to the brink of orgasm than she had ever been. As the thrills of ecstasy deep down in her abdomen were intensifying to a nigh to intolerable level, her internal muscles clenched around the rigid hardness inside her, and the sweet sensation of being stretched to the brim with each and every thrust heightened her pleasure beyond anything she had thought possible. Then it happened. While the rhythmic pulse inside her made her toes curl and her hips jerk convulsively, the only thing she could do was gritting her teeth against the urge to scream out the name of the man whom her husband had killed not quite a year ago.

Much later, the needs of her body slaked and her mind safely cradled in a lazy haze, she gazed down on the human being sleeping fretfully at her side. As her instincts had been warning her right from the beginning, falling for a guy because of his uncanny likeness to the one she had truly wanted but thought she could never have hadn't been wise, to put it mildly. Maybe Andrys had become aware of the real reason behind her emotional attachment to him over time and derived sadistic pleasure from punishing her for her transgression by trying to deny her the delights of the marital bed. Considering that a part of the Hunter's essence had seeped into him in the Forest, she certainly wouldn't put it beyond him.

Be that as it may, what had come to pass couldn't be undone anymore, and they both had to live with the consequences of their actions. For as long as Gerald's unique gift was keeping the memory of him alive, she could bear being married to his cheap imitation. If she was lucky, she would be pregnant soon, and children might fill the soul-crushing emptiness of the golden cage she had landed herself in.

Daydreaming about a little boy with soft brown hair and gray eyes who would continue the line the first and only true Neocount of Merentha had founded so many years ago, Narilka huddled tighter into her coverlet, but sleep eluded her for a long, long time.


End file.
